Yesterday morning, the still shell shocked staff at Current TV was called to an all hands staff meeting at its San Francisco headquarters, which was teleconferenced to their offices in LA and NYC, to meet their new bosses.

That would be two of Al Jazeera’s top guys: Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of international operations, and Muftah AlSuwaidan, general manager of the London bureau.

Ominously missing was the creator of Current, the self proclaimed inventor of the Internet and savior of clean energy, Al Gore, although his partner, Joel Hyatt, stood proudly with the Al Jazeera honchos.

“Of course Al didn’t show up,” said one high placed Current staffer. “He has no credibility.

“He’s supposed to be the face of clean energy and just sold [the channel] to very big oil, the emir of Qatar! Current never even took big oil advertising — and Al Gore, that bulls***ter sells to the emir?”

The meeting, while not contentious, was, according to staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity, miserable.

Did Gore, who is by some accounts now richer than Mitt Romney, have some hypocrisy-induced shame or was his absence merely due to a previously scheduled engagement that required him to fire up the jet to fly halfway around the world to address an emergency strategy session about greenhouse gas reduction?